


Samsara

by icarus_chained



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Anger, Belief, Character Study, Consequences, Gen, Hell, Karma - Freeform, Philosophy, Prompt Fic, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Religion, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 22:06:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2084856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Khan did not believe in karma. He believed in action and in strength, in hell and in vengeance. What costs he paid were not his own, but those imposed upon him. To his last breath, he believed that.</p><p>Small TOS Khan character study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Samsara

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the theme of rebirth. Um. Contains references to beliefs that I only have shaky knowledge of at best, to warn you in advance. And I'm not sure I agree with Khan, it just seemed like this would be close to what _he_ believed, given both "Space Seed" and "Wrath of Khan"?

_And here they say that a person consists of desires,_  
 _and as is his desire, so is his will;_  
 _and as is his will, so is his deed;_  
 _and whatever deed he does, that he will reap._  
\--- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

 

It was said that karma became clear in suffering. That it was the consequence of a man's actions that finally revealed their nature to him, that showed him what he himself had become. The blind, it was said, only realised their own nature when at last they paid its price. 

Khan had never believed that. To act, he had thought, was to have vision, to have knowledge. To act at all was to refute blindness and embrace understanding. A man's desire was his will, and his will was his deed. To perform that deed, he first had to know his desires, and to embrace their consequences for him. The power, the will, the vision to act, those were the strength of a man, and his virtue. There could be no consequence to destroy that. There could be no later karma to change a strong man's understanding of his own soul. Such uncertainties were for lesser men, those who had not strength to act at all.

It did not occur to him, then, that the ruins of Ceti Alpha V might be the consequence of the man he had become. That cost was not the cost of _his_ actions, he thought, but of those of the man who had sent them there, who had left his people to die. That ruin was not his price, it was _Kirk's_ , and Kirk was the one who must be made to pay it. For every life, for every moment of suffering, Kirk must be forced to pay. For the ruin of Khan's paradise, where all he had fought for had been meant to come to fruition.

 _That_ had been his karma. That paradise, that small, wild empire of will and of deed. It had been like a rebirth, in the beginning. Ceti Alpha V. It had been all that he had dreamed and more. A place of perfect vision, of perfect action, wild and full of consequence. A place to test a man's strength, and show the virtue of it. Far from the corruption of old Earth, from the machinations of lesser beings, Khan's colony was to be the beginning of something new, and the fruition of all that had come before. 

Until Kirk had ruined it. Until another man's actions led to its fall.

It had never occurred to him that the fault did not lie with Kirk. Not once, in all his wild quest for vengeance. It hadn't occurred to him that while they had slumbered aboard the SS _Botany Bay_ , his people and he, the cycle had turned on them, a rebirth in truth, and it was the consequences of all they had been that they reaped now in turn. Those who had been weak were now strong, in this new world, and those who had been strong ... now understood, for the first time, their own weaknesses. Reborn two hundred years into the future, the conquered were now the conquerers, and the conquerers now - and perhaps justly - were the conquered. 

That was the nature of samsara. By a man's deeds was his nature determined, and by his nature was consequence called upon him. No act of will could turn aside the cycle. No strength of purpose could unmake that consequence before it struck. It was only when a man at last realised his own nature, only when a man was at last moved to change, that the cycle could be broken.

But Khan had never believed that. Khan had never believed himself blind. He had believed, in the end, in something much simpler. A consequence without end, placed upon a man by outside forces, which called from him an endless answering vengeance. On Ceti Alpha V, blind to consequence and to his own nature, he had learned the lie of rebirth. 

And the truth, ever and always, of hell.

 

 _Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven._  
\--- Satan, John Milton's _Paradise Lost_  
 _From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee._  
\--- Captain Ahab, Herman Melville's _Moby Dick_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm basing the discussion of karma and samsara (rebirth) in this solely on some quick research on [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma#Karma_and_causality). So, you know, take that with a HUGE grain of salt, and anyone with a better understanding of the concepts feel free to inform/correct me? *ducks sheepishly*


End file.
